books

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Walk to Beautiful

I did something last night that I haven’t done in a long, long time: I stayed up until 2 AM reading a book. 

Good stories, especially true stories, intrigue me more than anything.

Walk to Beautiful by Jimmy Wayne is a captivating story of one man’s troubling childhood and how he became successful despite the trials. 

walk to beautiful

There was no way I could put the book down.

No matter how many chapters I said were the last.

No matter how many times I told myself, “30 more minutes, Audra.”

How could I stop now? The story was holding me captive! 

Jimmy lived in a world raging with violence and with no sense of normalcy, but he still had hope.

This one fact is amazing to me.

 

We are all hardwired to hope, which is why I think the saddest thing to see is hopelessness prevail. A sense of utter hopelessness is the #1 reason people commit suicide.

What I love about Jimmy’s story is how he wrestled hopelessness to the ground, tied it up, and ended it’s life–not his own.

Inspiration is awesome, no doubt, but inspiration that leads to change? Yes! Sign me up!

The biggest obstacle Jimmy faced as a boy was loneliness because people saw him as another juvenile delinquent when he was just an innocent kid. He only knew darkness; he’d only seen glimpses of light.

Many children in foster care face the same challenge. They want to do better, but no one’s ever modeled what that was for them. Or, in the worst of cases, they’ve succumbed to hopelessness.

All it takes, though, is one person reaching out to help. 

And that’s all I could think about last night as I turned page after page….

 

 

 

 

 

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Quitter’s Guilt

  Reading a book is like going on a date. You don’t know if it’ll work out. 

Sure, the book cover is interesting and the blurb is intriguing, but you really don’t know if you’ll make it to the end.

Despite this foreknowledge, I still suffer from quitter’s guilt whenever I ditch a book. 

My fun reading time is limited now, so if a book doesn’t keep my attention, I move on. 

I ditched 2 books this week because they were not working out for me….and felt terrible! 

My goal, though, is not to slog my way through a book. 
My goal is to enjoy the books I read because if you don’t enjoy a book, the likelihood of learning anything from it is slim. 

Can you relate to this dilemma?

Or do you have hard and fast guidelines for when to ditch a book?

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Future Rockstar?

I spent the afternoon wandering around the mall with my friend Nichole. 

There were a TON of people at Woodland Hills Mall! I even got stuck in some traffic. This is the first time I’ve sat in traffic since moving. 

It was fun to window shop, though, and I even rode a hover board.

Not sure I’m ready for a future of hover boarding…it’s just better for me to stay on the ground. 

Nichole and I then drove over to Mardel, a Christian bookstore. Our friend Andrew lives close to there, so he joined us. 

The three of us talked  about books and had a great time getting to know each other more. 

Andrew wanted to go into The Guitar Store. He showed us around and played a Fender Strat. 

I’ve always wanted to play the guitar, but today Andrew encouraged me to play  a bass guitar. 

I tried one out and it really fits me much better than a regular guitar!

I almost bought one, too! (It was only $16o.)

Don’t worry. I fought the impulse. 

This is not a decision to make on a whim, but it got me excited about learning how to play again. 

Who knows? Maybe you’re following the blog of a future rockstar? 

Not!

Future rockstar or not, my Saturday was awesome. It was fun to hang out with friends. 

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Book talk is the best

IMG_1632I love book people.

My waitress at lunch today was a book person. She came into work with a book in her hand. She saw me reading after I ordered and struck up a conversation.

What are you reading?

What’s the book about?

What’s your favorite genre?

Talk about a great time of discussion. My book obsession is not shared by many! Statistics say that the number of readers is shrinking with each generation.

Literacy is such a precious gift. Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, once said:

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Our society puts a lot of emphasis on education, yet it does not stress the importance of reading enough. I can’t count the number of articles I’ve read in the past couple of years dealing with “screen time” and “how technology is reshaping education.”

Technology is wonderful. Making education fun is fine. What’s not fine is that the majority of children I meet hate reading.

The notion that blogs and magazines, tutorials and games can replace the knowledge found in a book baffles me.

I’m not going to debate the virtues of e-readers vs. paper books in this post either.

Let me just go ahead and define what I consider “reading”:

  • Printed books
  • E-books
  • Audio books

I value all the forms of reading available to us today. This debate of what does and does not constitute reading is silly in light of the bigger problem at hand.

I don’t care about your preferred method of reading. I’m just happy you are reading at all! This is no time for us to start hating on methods.

So, don’t be afraid to interrupt my reading at a restaurant. After I dance a jig, I will happily discuss books with you.

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Life is a story

We all have a story to tell, right?

Your life, after all, is one big story that gets written a day at a time.

Of course, every story is different in one way or another, but we all have a lot more in common than we realize.

Can you list all the movies that retell Cinderella?

Exactly. There’s too many to count.

journalThe premise is the same but the small details–time, place, etc–are what make it different.

Our world is filled with brokenness: tragedy, addiction, abuse, divorce. Listen to enough stories and you hear about these things.

No one escapes life without a few sad chapters, with pages covered with tears, blood, and grime.

I am finding, though, that the greatest stories of redemption are found in books where sad chapters give way to victorious chapters.

The victorious chapters are when the villains–and all their filthy, disgusting lies–get their butts kicked.

Love, joy, mercy, hope, grace, forgiveness…..

These are the key elements of  victorious chapters.

But you have to remember that victorious chapters cannot replace the sad ones.

No amount of time or distance can eliminate the past.

Think of it this way:

If I read a book and hate the first half, I can’t decide to only read the second half next time. The story wouldn’t make any sense.

What I can do is choose to see how the character made peace with the past in order to move on.

I said earlier that we’re all more alike than we realize.

We’re all alike because we’re all storytellers.

Maybe you didn’t write the first part of your story.

Let that go.

Focus on the story you get to write.

Focus on the victorious chapters.

And share the hope–the redemption in your story–with the world.